Be happy

Yarn from duplo on Vimeo.

Rhubarb Pie and Sunset

On my wheel
My main spinning wheel is a Majacraft Rose - and I love her! I also still have my first wheel, an Ashford Traditional. Unfortunately we don't have the space for two wheels so the latter has to reside in the basement, looking very sad.

I recently spun two fibers where it was particularly important to me to maintain the color progression of the hand dyed fiber in the finished yarn. Thus I chose to chain-ply these yarns, and I love the result.Both are light fingering weight.

Rhubarb Pie (fiber hand dyed by Spunky Eclectic) is a 50/50 mix of Merino and Tencel. The yarn is soft and has a nice sheen to it from the Tencel content.

Sunset (fiber hand dyed by alltheprettyfibers) is a 70/30 mix of SW Merino and Nylon. The yarn turned out very soft and smooshy.

I thought of designing a semicircular shawl with Rhubarb Pie, and Sunset didn't know what it wanted to be yet. However, both skeins were sold yesterday, so with one laughing and one crying eye I don't need to worry about that anymore :-)

Currently I am spinning a lovely Merino/Silk mix, hand dyed by Corgi Hill Farms in varying shades of dark red.I just adore this color.

It will be a 2-ply lace yarn, spun with a ratio of 1:19.5. Since I have 8 oz this will take me a while....

BTW, you might see a Wollee Winder on my wheel. Maybe it's my German heritage that makes me anil enough to hate the ridges that form when you use a regular flyer.And I love spinning without having to stop.
So even though the WW does sometimes give me problems I can't live without it :-)

I have a few spindles, too, namely two Goldings and a Wildcraft besides several more simple wooden ones.
Here is the Wildcraft spindle - it's sooo pretty:

 

I don't drink Whiskey and I don't want to advertise this particular brand - but the box is perfect for storing a spindle :-)

Here we go

After a long time of contemplating i decided to blog about my knitting, weaving and spinning projects. Maybe it will help me get a little more organized :-)

Needles:
Currently I have 5 projects on my needles,

• 3 pairs of socks in varying states of progress - the green ones are hibernating because I hate knitting socks with Drops Delight, the colours are beautiful (matter of taste, of course), but I decided that socks with a singles yarn are not for me! The red ones are lovely, and the pattern is interesting (from Knitting socks with handpainted yarn) but after the first excitement it's a little tedious. However I want to wear them so they must get done! The third pair I love, even though they are also knit with a singles yarn (Meilenweit 100 Magico)... I used a simple garter rib pattern which makes for a perfect fit.

• 1 lace shawl - trying my hand at designing a semicircular lace shawl. I am knitting it with some of the most beautiful hand dyed silk yarn from Walk Collection

• another lace shawl, Unique Melody, for a friend, knit with the incredibly soft and beautiful Merino/Cahsmere yarn from Squoosh Fiberarts.The pattern is cleverly designed and very easy to memorize.

• 1 toddler sweater for my son. I found this great color pattern to use up one skein of Cascade Heritage 150 Paint plus some grey sockyarn as the background color.. No stranding for this pattern! I will design it as a shawl collar sweater with set-in sleeves that are picked up and knit top to bottom.

My spinning wheel is working almost on a daily basis, and I will update my current spinning projects in the next post.